April 7, 2006  - Kian and Remee Hodgson are British fraternal twins who are about to celebrate their first birthday.

There's a twist, though. Kian has the genes from the Jamaican-Caribbean side of the family. With dark skin, hair and eyes, she looks black. Remee has light skin, blond hair and blue eyes, and looks white.

It's a genetic fluke because the twins' parents are biracial -- Kylee Hodgson, 19, and Remi Horder, 17, have white mothers and black fathers. Experts estimate that there is a one in a million chance of one black and one white twin being born to biracial parents.

"It's not truly a pure black parent with a pure white parent. You had both parents who are already mixed racially so that when they go back together you can get both extremes," said Dr. Steven Goldstein, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at New York University Medical Center.

Mixed-race people have genetic codes for both light and dark skin in their genes. Usually, each sperm and egg cell contains genes of both races. In rare cases, an egg or sperm cell may possess coding for just one skin color.

What makes the odds astronomical is that to get a black twin and a white twin, there have to be four of these rare single-race sperm and egg cells, and then the "black" and "white" eggs have to be fertilized by the sperm cell of the same "color."

That's just what happened inside Hodgson's womb.

Hodgson said that when she first saw the twins, she didn't notice their different skin colors because she was more concerned about checking their fingers and ears.

When pictures of the twins began to circulate, other people noticed right away -- including the British press.

well, EVERYONE is racist in some capacity. But only some of us are ignorant.

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I wouldn't say racist, as that sounds more negative. I think it's more prejudice. Like around here, people from India cause a lot of trouble. Stealing, murders, fights. I don't care about race or where people are from, I mean I live in England but I'm half Welsh and quarter Polish so I can't really complain, but I will always avoid walking past asian gangs and the dangerous villages. There's always a voice in my head that says I'll probably get mugged if I go through Glodwick.
I'm actually more interested in talking to foreign folk or immigrants. There's a girl on my course from Poland. She's just top, very funny, very different way of seeing the world. One of the best people I've ever met, infact.

Anyways, to the topic itself. Our family is a little like that. I mean little though. Everyone in this house has blond(e) hair and blue eyes. Except my brother, who inherited 2 of our grandparents hair and eye colour. Brown hair, brown eyes. although he was born like me and my sister; pure white hair.
It's all mad. Just genes and alleles and that having a right ol giggle.

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